


we’re never done with killing time (can i kill it with you?)

by jaldon



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Breaking and Entering, Gen, Hair Dye, Sibling Bonding, hair cuts, its a problem yes but i love him, i’m sorry that i can’t write anything that doesn’t include jason
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 15:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14980301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaldon/pseuds/jaldon
Summary: "Okay, what?” Asks Jason, who’s still very confused. “You’re saying you broke into my apartment in the middle of the night to dye my hair? And you planned this with Steph beforehand?”“Yes,” Cass says.





	we’re never done with killing time (can i kill it with you?)

**Author's Note:**

> ok so months ago [jules](http://coolgirl.tumblr.com/) asked me to write a fic where “cass dyes jason’s hair” and i FINALLY got to it so. here it is. title from a lorde song (400 lux) as per fucking always. 
> 
> this fic was betaed by my wonderful pal [eva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaclipse)

Jason immediately knows something’s wrong when he returns to his safe house (his favorite safehouse, god dammit) and the window is open. Because he’s not that stupid, and he knows how to close windows, and he knows how to keep a Safe House safe.

 _It’ll have to go_ , he thinks, which sucks because it was a good Safe House and bruce hadn’t found it for eight months of living in it a couple days at a time. Then again, Babs probably knew about it anyways, but she knows about anything.

Silently pulling a knife out of his coat, he slowly walks down the hallway towards his living room. He doesn’t hear or see anything, yet the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He grips the knife like a lifeline and fights the urge to call out _Is anyone there?_ Because again, not stupid, and he’s watched horror movies.

There’s a shadow in the living room. The shadow is sitting calmly on his sofa, legs folded. The shadow is holding a bag of something in its lap. The shadow says, “Hello Jason.”

The shadow is a fucking bat, of course, because who else would want to royally fuck up his Friday Night? Well, a lot of people, actually, but that isn’t the point. He hits his head against the wall, fighting the urge to stab himself in the eye.

The bat gets up and he hits his head on the wall again, except this time it’s accidental.

“What do you want,” he growls. He’s really, _really_ not in the mood. The shadow reaches for something in the bag- a knife?- and he scrambles for his knife as well. Instead of a weapon, however, he comes face to face with- “Hair dye?”

The shadow grins and flips the light switch, and in the sudden brightness Jason can see Cassandra Cain.

It’s funny, really, because out of all of the bats, Cass is the one Jason would least expect to break into his Safe House to wave around a bottle of hair dye. Hell, even Tim is more likely to be waving hair dye in his face. If he was doing that, however, it would probably be to blind Jason, and not in the sort of friendly hair dye waving that Cass is doing now. Then again, Jason has tried to kill Tim before. All that being said, Cass is the one he’s the least close to. His memories of her include her yelling at him when he tried to kill someone. He thinks that happened multiple times.

He’s also pretty sure he’s never tried to kill her, so that’s a good thing.

“Yes,” Cass says. “Hair dye. I brought colors.” She unceremoniously dumps the bag out onto Jason’s kitchen floor. Tubes spill out onto the floor- Jason spots _Badass Blue_ and _Outrageous Orange_.

“What?” Jason says.

“You can choose,” Cass says, picking up a bottle and tossing it to him. “Steph thought that you’d want _Rocking Red_.”

“Okay, what?” Asks Jason, who’s still very confused. “You’re saying you broke into my apartment in the middle of the night to dye my hair? And you planned this with Steph beforehand?”

“Yes,” Cass says, sitting down on one of his spinning stools.

“Why?”

“Family bonding?” Cass offers. Jason is pretty sure that this is the most she’s talked to him ever. He just looks at her. She laughs. “Your hair is boring.” She spins around so he can’t see her face.

“Okay, so now you’re just insulting me,” he says. “So why should I let you dye my hair instead of, I don’t know, doing the reasonable-person thing and kicking you out of my house.”

“You’re not a reasonable person,” Cass says, spinning the stool around again.

“Okay, fair,” Jason says, rubbing the back of his head.

“So I can do it?” Cass asks, finally stopping and facing him. And her eyes are so wide that he can’t refuse because it would be inhuman or something.

“Fine,” he grumbles.

“ _Rocking red_?”

Jason picks the bag up and looks through it, spotting _Not-So-Mellow Yellow_ and _Terrific Teal_. “Where did you even get all of these?”

“Corner store,” Cass replies. Who knew that terrifyingly strong vigilantes bought hair dye from the corner store, right? “You’re stalling. Steph did _Violent Violet_.”

“Well I can’t match with her,” Jason says. “That would be tacky.” He throws the purple tube; it sails past Cass and out of the window. “What color did you do?”

“Black,” Cass grins.

“You’re hair is already black!”

She sticks her tongue out at him and shrugs. “But it’s not boring like yours is.”

Cass just watches him as he paws through the bag, and it’s starting to get kind of unnerving. “Fine,” he grumbles. “ _Rocking Red_.”

She claps her hands together like she’s actually excited about this. Maybe she is, Jason doesn’t know what excites other vigilantes these days. And he’s never had a sister before.

 _Shit_.

Cass is his _sister_.

And he’s, like, never talked to her before now.

Cass, seemingly oblivious to the crisis Jason is going through, drags one of Jason’s chairs over to the sink. She procures a pair of plastic gloves and a bag from her jacket, and sets down a towel on the rim of the counter.

“Come here,” she says, patting the chair. Jason obliges, sitting down and laying his head back over the sink. “I’ll just dye this,” says Cass, touching the white streak gently. She makes sure not to touch his forehead, Jason notices.

“Lean back,” Cass says. When he does, she rinses his hair and the hands him a towel to rub it dry.

“Where did you even learn to do this?” Jason asks, towel in front of his face.

“Steph. She dyed my hair and taught me to do hers.”

“You mean you did dye your hair?” Jason says, shocked. He tossed the towel back to her once his hair is dry.

“Yellow streaks,” Cass says. “But it was too con… con…”

“Conspicuous.”

She nods. “I dyed it back. But she still has her purple.”

“Yeah, well, I think it fits her whole vibe. Besides,” Jason says, “she doesn’t really pull off the whole ‘I am the night’ thing.”

Cass pokes him. “I’m gonna tell her you said that.” Jason groans.

Cass pulls the plastic gloves on, and she looks extremely concentrated, as if she was doing surgery instead of dyeing Jason’s hair. She takes Jason’s white streak and makes it into a ponytail. Then, starting from the tip, she combs cream into it.

“What’s that?” Jason says, “The dye?”

“No. Bleach.”

“Why do I need bleach? The hair is already white.”

“The dye won’t stay without it,” Cass says.

“Well, it itches. When do we take it out?” Jason asks.

“Ten minutes. And stop whining, you sound like Tim before he’s had any coffee.”

Jason tenses. “I’m not whining,” he replies, but doesn’t repeat the complaint.

After ten minutes, they repeat the process of Cass carefully washing Jason’s hair and Jason slightly-less-carefully drying it.

She squirts some of the dye out of the tube onto her hands and then spreads through the shock of white hair. She continues working dye through the hair for a couple of moments, longer than he feels like the small section of hair should take. But hey, she’s the expert here.

“It needs to sit for a while,” she finally says, wrapping it in plastic and peeling the gloves off. “Just rinse it out in the morning with cold water.” She starts putting the dyes back into her bag, and Jason realizes that she’s going to leave. He doesn’t want her to go quite yet.

“Or,” he says, “we can watch a movie and then you can help me rinse the dye out. You know, to make sure I don’t fuck it up.”

Cass looks up, surprised, and then she smiles at him. “Okay.”

“Have you seen _Inception_?” Jason asks as they walk into his living room. When she shakes her head, he says, “You’re kidding,” and pops it into the DVD Player.

After the movie, she helps him wash the dye out and he helps her clean up the hair dye supplies. On the tube of _Rocking Red_ , he spots the phrase “Lasts 6 Months!” and sighs to himself. At least he wears a helmet half the time. 

It’s only after she leaves that he decides he won’t abandon the safe house after all.

-

The next time it happens, Cass uses the kitchen window, the one right above the sink. She comes in with a bag similar to the one she had the first time.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hey Cass,” he says, resigned to the fact that he’ll never have a secret safe house again. But then he’s confused, because- “My dye hasn’t faded yet.”

“I know,” she says, climbing gracefully out of the sink. Seriously, how is that even _possible_? Jason hasn’t met a single other person who can climb out of a sink _gracefully_.

“So what’s up?” He says, “And don’t say you just want to hang out because I see your scary hair bag.”

Cass smiles and pulls something out of the bag- a pair of scissors. She waves them menacingly in his general direction.

“You want to cut my hair,” Jason says. “No fucking way, Cassandra.” He considers running, briefly.

“Come on, Jason,” she says. “Your hair is…”

“What.”

“Bad?” She says. “Steph and I decided that it needs a trim.” She sees the look on his face and adds, “Just a trim, I promise.”

“Since when are you and Steph the Counsel of Jason’s Hair?”

“Since you let it grow out and it got ugly?” Cass supplies. “Jason, it’s for the greater good.”

He moves away so the table is between the two of them. “I am not letting your scissors within nine feet of my hair.” But he pauses, considering. “Have you even cut hair before?”

“Yes. Stephanie’s,” Cass says. “She taught me how.”

“Have you ever cut _curly_ hair before?” He says, suspicious.

“No,” she says, “but I’m a very fast learner.”

“Cass,” he says. He’s sure she _is_ a fast learner, but he doesn’t want it to be _his_ head that’s the guinea pig.

“Jason.”

“Cass.”

“Jason.”

“Cass,” he says, but the staring contest they’re locked in is sort of freaking him out so he throws up his hands. “Fine!”

Cass, the weirdo, climbs over the table instead of around it to give him a hug.

“But,” he says, from within her arms. “If you make me regret this I will break into your room and cut all of your hair off while you sleep.”

She snorts. “I’d wake up.”

“I’m sure you would.” Sometimes, having a practically superhuman sister is annoying.

 _Sister_. It’s still weird to say, but he thinks he likes it.

He also thinks their weird hair styling bonding sessions have helped.

At the sink, Cass washes and dries his hair. Then she takes out the dreaded scissors, and Jason watches as his precious brown locks fall to the floor. But, true to her word, Cass only trims his hair.

In the end, when she holds a mirror (from the bag again) up in front of him, he has to admit he looks better and slightly less ‘sad man who lives on his own.’

He moves to stand up.

“Not so fast,” Cass says, pulling a tube of _Rocking Red_ out of her bag.

“Cass,” he says. “It’s six month dye. It’s still there.”

“Yes,” says Cass, “but it’s fading. Please?” He sits back down, rolling his eyes as he does so.

This time, as they wait for the dye to settle, they watch _The Matrix_.

“I think,” grumbles Cass, “that you’re just trying to make me watch the longest, most confusing movies possible.”

“Maybe so,” Jason says, grinning. “But I’m also the one who’s letting you fuck with their hair.” He gets an idea. “How about, as payment, you let me dye _your_ hair?”

“I would,” Cass says, smiling sweetly, “but I can’t. You’d need bleach, and I didn’t bring any.” She feigns disappointment. Jason doesn’t have to feign it. “Besides, I can’t match with you. That would be tacky.”

Jason recognizes his words from earlier. “Sometimes I hate that I’m so damn quotable,” he says, “but it’s just my cross to bear.”

“Being perfect is mine,” she teases, getting up to leave. “I have to go. But Jason?”

He looks at her.

“I’ll see you soon. Out of costume.” She grabs the bag and makes toward the window, the dark streets of Gotham City visible just beyond her.

“I’m sure you’ll make some excuse to, yeah,” he says, waving his hand. But he knows that even if she doesn’t make a stupid excuse to see him, he’ll make one to see her. They’re siblings, after all. It makes him _happy_.

“Maybe I’ll even let you at my hair again,” Jason calls, and he swears he can hear Cass laughing as she disappears into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> ok so u realize that cass was probably WILDLY out of character and for that i am very sorry... i just wanted to have a lil fun. 
> 
> pls leave comments/kudos and if you want to talk to me more my tumblr is [here](http://dykejason.tumblr.com/)


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